NEW YORK, New York - U.S. stocks were like a tug of war Friday. Industrials lost ground, while technology stocks advanced.

"Many people are taking some profits and not necessarily reinvesting that money quite yet," JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade in Chicago told Reuters Thomson Friday. "The U.S. equity market is still the best game in terms of safety versus opportunity. But there is a shift going on."

The Dow Jones industrials shed 469.74 points or 1.50 percent to 30,932.37.

The Nasdaq Composite, going against the trend, rose 72.91 points or 0.56 percent to 13,192.34.

The Standard and Poor's 500 slipped 18.19 points or 0.48 percent to close at 3,811.15.

The U.S. dollar has benefited from a rush to safety, with advances across the board. The euro fell to 1.2075. The British pound slid to 1.3932. The Japanese yen sank to 106.58. The Swiss franc was weaker at 0.9090.

The Canadian dollar weakened to 1.2718. The Australian dollar, after hitting a 3-year high of .8007 twenty-four hours earlier, tumbled more than three cents to 0.7693, around the New York close Friday. The New Zealand dollar too dropped like a stone to 0.7229.

Overseas, the FTSE 100 in London plummeted 2.53 percent. The German Dax lost 0.67 percent. The Paris-based CAC 40 declined 1.39 percent.

On Asian markets, in Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 plunged 1,201.26 points or 3.99 percent to 28,966.01.

The Hang Seng in Hong Kong tumbled 1,030.98 points or 3.43 percent to close at 29,043.19.

The Australian All Ordinaries fell to a six-months low, shedding 165.00 points or 2.30 percent to 6,941.00.

China's Shanghai Composite declined 75.97 points or 2.12 percent to 3,509.08.